I think that Greg is right. As with all the arguments about "what is folk?" I think that the categories are a convenient way to break up a continuum. When I think of people like Mississippi John Hurt and Charlie Poole, their music spanned everything from blues and medicine shows to "old-time" music and pop songs. There is a whole sub-category of White Country Blues that would include a lot of what Jimmie Rogers and the string bands did. I've often been put in blues guitar workshops in festivals, even though I am not a blues guitarist or singer. But, I do enough blues to get by. You could say the same about gospel and rhythm and blues. There is a lot of the blues in black gospel and rhythm and blues, and a lot of black gospel in rhythm and blues. Same well. The categories have their value, though and are more specific than "Popular" music. When you go on to eBay and look for gospel, initially, everything buy classical music is categorized as Popular music. In gospel caegories, they at least have "Contemporary Christian" (which sounds like it should be in the Popular music section and Gospel Music as categories in many stores. That saves me a lot of time not having to weed through all the contemporary Christian stuff to find the old gospel. Categories have their value, if you don't take them too literally and you aren't limited by them.

Jerry